Best of Virgins Bundle

by Cathy Williams

  The restaurant was small and intimate and full. They were invited to wait for a table in the small snug off the dining area where coffee was taken and, once seated, Katy was subjected to one of those contemplative stares that Bruno seemed to specialise in.

  ‘What?’ she asked, going red. ‘What is it? Why are you staring at me like that? It’s rude.’

  ‘Rude for a man to stare at a woman? Interesting take on things. Why is it rude?’

  ‘Because…’ Katy floundered.

  ‘Surely you must have been stared at before? By your boyfriends? Caught up in the throes of lust?’

  She sought refuge in the menu in front of her and breathed a sigh of relief when the unnerving line of conversation was dropped and he began chatting about the renovations to the pool. Not that there was much left to chat about on the subject, but she was grateful for the reprieve.

  Actually, the pool was finished, all bar one or two superficial touches. Bruno had been absolutely right on that. He had given her a free hand to fling money at the project, with speed being the urgent criterion, and the workforce had risen admirably to the task. When they left the house, it was to a changed complex. Roughened, non-slip black and white tiles surrounding the actual pool had been installed in record time and the pool, which had by no means been as decrepit as first imagined, had been spruced up to the highest standard and now gleamed invitingly turquoise, ready for Joseph’s first light exercise foray. She had managed to find three comfortable wicker chairs, which she had put around a low, circular table, and in the morning she might ask for time off to buy a few plants, which would thrill Joseph, maybe even convince him to linger awhile.

  ‘I think we should reveal it to him as a wonderful surprise, no hints whatsoever that we think he might not exactly warm to the concept of actually using the damn thing as much as we want him to. And, of course, you’ll have to go in with him. He cannot possibly be expected to swim lengths alone. You have a swimsuit, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t got a swimsuit, Bruno! At least, not here. Why should I?’

  ‘Then you’ll have to go out and buy one, the sooner the better.’

  Katy lapsed into silence and contemplated the prospect of frolicking in a pool. She had never been a keen swimmer, something she put down to having to parade as a self-conscious fourteen-year-old in swimsuits that had always seemed to make her look even skinnier than usual. She could remember one term of obligatory swimming lessons when her lack of curves had made her cringe with embarrassment at joining in a mixed class, where the boys would ogle the girls and the girls would coyly parade their figures. At least Joseph wouldn’t notice her lack of shapeliness.

  She surfaced from her reverie to realise that Bruno had moved on and was now talking about something else entirely. Isobel.

  ‘Sorry?’ she said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. ‘Could you repeat all that? I wasn’t listening.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I was daydreaming, actually,’ she confided sheepishly. ‘I’ve always had a bit of a problem with that. It used to drive the teachers crazy. They’d be talking about something, some Maths equation, and I would really start off paying attention but then I’d find my mind wandering and…’

  Bruno held up one hand and gave her a long-suffering look. ‘No need to go into all the details. You weren’t listening. Enough said. And when, if you don’t mind me asking, did your concentration begin to lapse? Funny, I’ve never had that effect on women before.’

  ‘What effect?’

  ‘Sending them asleep.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep!’ Katy protested. ‘I told you, I was—’

  ‘Okay, okay. I get the general picture. Well, to recap…’ He put a lot of heavy emphasis on the word, leaving her in little doubt that repeating himself to a woman who hadn’t been paying attention to him was not something he relished, ‘I was talking about Isobel. Joseph is back on Saturday and I think it might be an idea if he gets to meet her on the Sunday. I can ask her up for the day, give them an opportunity to get to know one another. Why,’ he sighed, ‘are you frowning?’

  ‘Was I? Oh, goodness! No. I mean, yes. Terrific idea.’ Katy tried to picture Joseph’s reaction to the statuesque, intimidating blonde and found that she couldn’t. She also, disturbingly, found that she didn’t much care for the thought of Isobel making another appearance, which was silly.

  ‘Oh, yes. I can see “Terrific Idea” stamped all over your face. Spit it out, Katy. What’s the problem here? You may not have liked Isobel, but I assure you that my godfather will be over the moon at the prospect of his godson finally settling down.’

  ‘I’m sure…it’s just that, well…Joseph is a bit of an old romantic at heart. Funny considering he never married.’

  ‘Probably because he never married.’

  Katy wondered how anyone who was so sceptical on the concept of marriage could actually be contemplating it himself, then she recalled the scrupulous list of plus points he had ticked off for her benefit in favour of the ex-model heiress and realised that marriage, for him, was probably quite different from anyone else’s concept of it. Certainly very different from his godfather’s who, in his strolls down memory lane, had displayed a touching faith in the power of love.

  ‘The thing is…’ she felt the need to expound in an anxious voice, ‘you’ll have to behave a little differently with Isobel when she comes, or else Joseph might just think that you’re throwing yourself into something purely for his benefit. He’s pretty sharp, actually.’

  ‘I don’t get it. What are you saying? No, I can sense a very long-winded explanation in the making, so let’s leave it until we’ve ordered, shall we?’

  Katy watched him as he consulted his menu with an expression that spoke volumes. Before, when he used to visit Joseph and she would engage in her evasion tactics, she had never noticed how darkly expressive his face could be. He had been a one-dimensional cut-out impressive solely for his looks, which had inspired a certain amount of awe, and his icy arrogance, which had filled her with quaking terror.

  Now, having been in his company for a period of time, she could see that his arrogance contained a wealth of nuances. He could be unexpectedly thoughtful, patient in a driven sort of way and disconcertingly humorous. He still wasn’t a comfortable man to be around but…

  She caught herself drifting off and snapped back to reality, ordering the heartiest thing on the menu and aware that he was looking at her with raised eyebrows.

  ‘I told you I eat a lot,’ Katy informed him testily, not having to look at him to know what he was thinking.

  ‘What mystifies me is where you put it. You have the slimmest arms I’ve ever seen on a woman.’ For a second, he caught himself wondering what the rest of her looked like without those shapeless clothes covering her up and almost laughed at his curiosity. ‘Now, you were telling me…? About why you think I need to behave differently around Isobel if Joseph isn’t to think that I’m spinning him fairy tales about wanting to marry her…?’

  ‘You don’t act like a man in love,’ Katy told him bluntly.

  ‘Oh, good grief, not this again!’

  She drew in her breath and willed herself to carry on. ‘You act the same when you’re around her as…well…as though…’

  ‘What would you have me do?’ Bruno cut in sharply, leaning forward towards her so that she really had to steel herself not to automatically pull back. A few weeks ago she would have cringed at the power of his impact, which rushed over her in waves. Now, she continued to hold his gaze stubbornly. ‘Make love to her in the dining room?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course not.’ Katy flushed, feeling her breathing quicken. ‘But Joseph will look at you, the way you are with her, and he’ll wonder why you’re marrying a woman you don’t seem to be madly in love with, then he’ll put two and two together and get, well, four…or five or whatever…’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ Bruno asked with lively interest.

  Katy shrugged, but this time he wasn’t havi
ng it. He topped up her glass with more wine. ‘And a shrug won’t do by way of an answer. Tell me how you think a man who is madly in love with a woman ought to act.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered vaguely.

  ‘Because you’ve never had a man madly in love with you?’

  He wasn’t going to trap her in this particular line of conversation, from which she would emerge a definite loser. ‘You didn’t seem to hang on her every word when she came over…’

  ‘You mean like the way I’m hanging on your every word now?’

  ‘Very funny,’ Katy muttered. ‘You just weren’t all that…well, solicitous.’

  ‘But I’m not madly in love with her.’

  ‘Oh, Lord. You mustn’t tell Joseph that. It’ll break his heart.’ Her own heart gave a warm little flutter. So he was prepared to marry a woman he wasn’t in love with. What a cad! Nevertheless, it still gave her a peculiar, satisfied feeling to think that the striking Isobel hadn’t managed to capture his heart. Huh. Not that it mattered one way or the other.

  ‘And we wouldn’t want that, would we?’ Bruno said consideringly. ‘Maybe…’ He poured her some more wine, liking the way her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. She really had the most incredible eyes. ‘Maybe you should give me some lessons on how I ought to behave around Isobel. Show me where I went wrong…I mean, what should a man who is madly in love be doing right now, were he to be sitting opposite the object of his desire?’ Just for the hell of it, he thought, just to see how she’ll react…He reached out and covered her hand with his and then turned her hand over so that he could stroke her palm very softly with his thumb.

  For a few seconds, Katy was so startled that she literally froze, then hard on the heels of the freeze came a rush of heat that was so intense it made her head swim and her pulses race and sent funny, pleasurable little sensations racing to her breasts and between her legs. Made her feel weak and squirmy and…

  She snatched her hand away, horribly confused.

  ‘Wrong way?’ He felt a cold emptiness where her hand had lain in his. He sat back and gave her his most quizzical look. ‘Not expressive enough? Should I have caressed the cheek instead?’ Shall we try that manoeuvre? he wanted to ask her. Then he mentally slapped his wrist and wondered, fleetingly, what the hell had just gone on there. A bit of nothing that had felt like a lot of something, though he couldn’t for the life of him say what. Do him good to have Isobel around. Maybe he would invite her up for longer than just the one day. He obviously had a load of pent-up sexual energy that needed release.

  ‘Stop it!’ Katy’s voice was uncustomarily sharp. ‘It’s not a game, Bruno.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he said gruffly, a dark flush mounting his cheeks. ‘I apologise if I breached your impeachable moral codes just then, but there’s no need to hurl yourself into a state of panic at a bit of light-hearted, albeit misdirected, teasing.’

  ‘I’m not in a state of panic!’ she cried, then she lowered her voice, suddenly aware that they weren’t on their own even though she felt as if they were, as if the rest of the diners simply didn’t exist. ‘But—’ she didn’t want to say this but she was going to ‘—I’m a person. I have feelings, you know. You might think it’s a huge joke to pretend to treat me as some kind of practice ground for how you should behave with your fiancée, but I don’t think it’s funny at all.’

  Bruno had never been spoken to like that in his life before. He couldn’t think of a single woman he had ever known who wouldn’t have joined in his bit of fun, enjoyed it even. A number would have liked him to have taken the pretence further, for heaven’s sake! But Katy’s face was a picture of embarrassment and he was well and truly poleaxed. He looked away but not for long. He felt as if he was in sudden thrall to the woman sitting opposite him, looking at him with a kind of glaring defiance.

  ‘Okay. You’re right. I…I’m sorry.’

  It was such an obvious struggle for him to genuinely apologise for his behaviour that Katy relaxed and gave him a shy half-smile. Her body felt as if it was getting back to a state of normality too. Which was good because what she had felt when he had touched her, a meaningless touch for him, a bit of a joke, had left her shaken and scared. Scared because she had never felt such an intense sensation before. As if every nerve ending in her body had been electrified.

  She was quietly relieved when their food appeared, giving them something mundane to focus on. They talked about Joseph as well, and, staying well away from any topic that could be seen as remotely controversial, Bruno talked a bit about himself, about his childhood and his boarding-school experiences, only confiding when they were drinking their coffee that she was the first woman he had bored with stories of his youth.

  ‘They weren’t boring at all,’ Katy said, surprised that he could even think that. In some confusion, she thought that nothing about him was boring. ‘How can you ever really know someone unless you know about their past? It’s our history that makes us the people we are now, don’t you think? Gosh, that’s a little deep, isn’t it?’ She laughed awkwardly and sipped some of her coffee, which was as good as the rest of the meal had been. She had finished every morsel of her food, to his amazement, and had laughed at the expression on his face when she had finally closed her knife and fork.

  ‘Now my past!’ She rested her elbows on the table and cradled the cream cup between her hands, looking at him over the rim, making little notes in her head about his beautiful face, its dark contours, the length of his lashes, the way his eyes could look lazy yet alert at the same time. ‘I guarantee you’d fall asleep into your coffee if I were to tell you about it.’

  ‘Happiness is never boring,’ Bruno told her. ‘You had a happy childhood, two loving parents. That’s why you are the way you are…’ He gave her a strange look and then glanced down into his coffee, only breaking off to signal for the bill.

  ‘Which is what…?’ Three glasses of wine, not even three because there was still some left in her glass, and she felt utterly relaxed. ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘Why not?’ An amused smile tugged the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Because it’s bound to be critical. I know,’ she carried on without rancour, ‘that you don’t think you are, but you’re a very critical person. You can’t help yourself.’

  ‘And you are…’ he paused and looked at her from under his lashes ‘…frighteningly honest.’

  ‘Was that what you were going to tell me?’ Katy released a sigh of relief.

  ‘Honest and sincere and bewilderingly uncynical.’

  ‘What have I got to be cynical about?’ Katy asked, bemused by his interpretation of her personality. As though he had never met anyone who possessed those qualities before when, in fact, she would have said that they all added up to a very average and unremarkable person. But then, in his world, perhaps honesty was a rarity. He was an incredibly rich and powerful man and she knew that men like that were courted, fawned upon and surrounded mostly by people who would trip over themselves to agree with every word he said. And his adversaries probably moved around him like sharks, waiting for the moment when they could home in and make their kill.

  ‘You’re right. What have you got to be cynical about?’ he agreed, standing up and escorting her to the door, where they were profusely thanked by the manager of the restaurant and urged to come back soon.

  ‘Poor Bruno, I feel so sorry for you!’ Katy burst out impulsively and then swiftly regretted the impulse when she saw his features tighten. When would she ever learn not to shoot her mouth off with this man? She was all right for a while, then suddenly she would say something stupid. Like now. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, edging away a bit as they walked to where he had parked the car. ‘Idiotic thing to say.’

  ‘Why do you feel sorry for me?’ Out of the light, she could no longer see his expression. He sounded curious enough—politely curious, but who could tell with Bruno? Since he asked though…

  ‘I�
�d hate to be surrounded by hard-nosed cynics,’ she confided, pausing as he opened the car door for her and then slipping into the passenger seat. ‘How do you ever know whether someone really likes you or not?’ she carried on as he pulled out of the courtyard at a leisurely speed. ‘You must always have to watch what you say and think about what you do…’ At this juncture, she remembered Isobel, the woman he was not madly in love with but presumably deeply fond of with whom he could at least open up and be himself. Good to think about Isobel, a salutary reminder that this was not a date between a man and a woman getting to know one another. This was a ‘thank you for services rendered’ meal out.

  ‘So isn’t it brilliant that you have Isobel there? Someone you can be yourself with!’ she finished bracingly.

  Bruno gave a grunt, which Katy interpreted as agreement even though she might have expected something a little more forthcoming on the subject, and then lapsed into such concentrated silence that eventually she felt compelled to carry on.

  ‘I feel I ought to apologise…’ she began.

  ‘Again? What for this time?’

  Katy, thinking about her over-exaggerated reaction to his bit of teasing earlier on in the evening, was absently aware that his tone sounded a bit clipped, but she didn’t dwell on that. She was too busy dwelling on her gaucheness when he had touched her, jumping back as though she’d been burnt and then giving a speech about not being the sort of girl who played games like that. How unbearably puerile must he think her to be? Not to mention prudish and moralistic? Just the thought of Isobel had brought the unwelcome memory rushing back at her.

  ‘About the silly way I reacted when you were teasing me earlier on. Remember? When you held my hand and asked me to show you how a man who’s madly in love with a woman should behave? Well, I guess I overreacted a bit. A lot, actually. And it was presumptuous of me to tell you how you should behave anyway!’

  ‘So,’ Bruno murmured softly, sending her a glance, ‘are you telling me that you’re willing to give me some lessons after all?’ Naturally he knew the answer, but the thought of such a thing happening made his loins stir in immediate response, and before he could kill the thought his imagination broke free and was filling his head with all sorts of incredible images.